Editorial: The Unfair Share Act

The polls were empty on Nov. 3. Selecting a mayor did not interest many students, as electronic ballot boxes sat unused. Only tumbleweed was missing.

When students don’t vote, politicians don’t worry about targeting them. As the adage goes, “Decisions are made by those who show up.” In leaving the polls unattended, college students implicitly decided to allow Mayor Luke Ravenstahl to formally propose his student tax on Monday.

Ravenstahl calls the 1 percent tuition tax the “Fair Share Act.” It would levy a tax of about $135 per year for each Pitt student, generating approximately $16 million per year.

He said, “We can no longer afford to provide city services to those who are not paying their fair share,” according to the Tribune-Review. The mayor says that students use the police force, the fire department, building inspection and other city provisions without just compensation.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the city turned down a proposed $5.5 million donation from the Pittsburgh Public Service Fund, of which Pitt is a participant. Presumably, this voluntary donation was not a fair share.

Nor was Pitt’s $3 million to fund its own police force — apart from the city police services Ravenstahl says students use — or the current $4.5 million paid in city and school district taxes, as chronicled in the Post-Gazette.

The city would use $15 million of the tax revenue to fill a shortfall in city worker pensions and the extra $1 million to sustain the floundering Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh system.

For those of you playing along at home, these are not the city services the mayor thinks college students selfishly deplete.

The city needs help, but Pitt already contributes its fair share. Just last month, Pitt was named the top public school in the nation in a “Saviors of our Cities” survey, which ranked colleges’ contributions to their cities.

The University leads a plethora of community service initiatives, and its students usually provide the manpower.

Financially, UPMC is the largest employer in Pennsylvania. Students play a major role in sustaining micro-economies throughout the city, the most significant being Oakland. Tens of thousands of students fund these micro-economies. They cause restaurants, cafes, boutiques and cornershops to flourish, all of which pay business and property taxes.

Ravenstahl said the proposed tax is “less than one-tenth of what Councilman Peduto pays in property and wage taxes,” according to the Post-Gazette. That is not a logical comparison, since Peduto owns property and receives a tax on income. If students work, they pay income tax, too.

If the issue is property taxes, students indirectly pay those, as well. If they rent, landlords pay the taxes and adjust monthly rent rates accordingly.

The plan is a form of reverse populism wherein the mayor takes advantage of a recent stereotype that Pitt students gobble city resources, especially the police force with regard to the G-20 Summit and Super Bowl.

Unfortunately, the “Fair Share Act” attempts to portray students as privileged freeloaders. Getting a higher education is a privilege, but it is not reserved for a privileged class. Plenty of students are fighting to pay for this self-betterment, and redundant, excessive taxation only hinders their ability to get educated.

Yet Pitt students must share much of the blame for this scenario. This is what happens when students don’t become politically active. The ward including Oakland cast 1,889 ballots out of a possible 17,570. At a 10.8 percent voter turnout, this was the second-lowest in Allegheny County, only behind the ward containing Dusquesne University.

Relatively speaking, Ravenstahl didn’t win this election by very much. If students voted at the same rate as last year’s presidential election, local politicians like Ravenstahl would care a lot more about what they cared about.

Ravenstahl won, and six days after the election, he proposed this tax. Other taxes — for hospital stays and Downtown parking — have been withheld.

Ravenstahl’s decision might work because students didn’t show up. If you didn’t vote, don’t complain about the tax ­­— because you could have prevented it.